1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a recording/reproducing apparatus provided with a functional feature of coordinately processing restrictive information such as copy-related information including small units of data and larger units of data containing such small units.
This invention may typically be applicable to a recording/reproducing apparatus such as one adapted to use a DVD (digital versatile disk), one comprising a hard disk or a built-in large capacity semiconductor memory, or one adapted to simultaneously use a hard disk and a removable DVD, or similar, storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, in the technology of image compression, a DVD Standard employing both the MPEG 2 (Moving Image Coding Expert Group) System that is currently used as an international standard and the AC3 Audio Compression System has been proposed.
This standard is adapted to support the MPEG 2 System for moving image compression and also the AC3 Audio Compression System and the MPEG Audio Compression System for audio compression. It is also adapted to handle sub image data obtained by run length compression of bit map data for superimposition in movies and karaoke videos. This standard also defines control data (navi-pack) for special reproduction operations, such as fast forwarding and fast rewinding in reproducing apparatuses. Furthermore, this standard is also adapted to support the standards for ISO9660 and micro UDF.
Additionally, the standard for DVD-RAMs (with a storage capacity of about 4.7 GB) has been completed for the media and DVD-RAM drives have been popularly marketed as peripheral devices of computers.
Still additionally, the standard for RTR (real time recording)-RAMs which is a standard allowing DVD videos to record/reproduce information on a real time bases has been almost completed and the verifying operation will soon be over. This standard is based on the standard for currently marketed DVD videos. Efforts for providing a standard for file systems corresponding to such RTR-DVDs are currently being made.
Meanwhile, systems for recording/reproducing broadcast signals by utilizing a hard disk drive (HDD) built in a recording/reproducing apparatus are being discussed currently. Data with a volume more than 100 G bytes can be stored by means of a hard disk drive.
Along with the development of image compression technology, efforts are being paid for developing recording/reproducing apparatus that are adapted to effectively utilize information storage media (DVDs, hard disks, semiconductor memories, etc.) for the purpose of recording broadcast signals.
In a possible mode of utilization of such an apparatus, a signal of a broadcast program (or a signal reproduced from some other recording medium) is input to a recording/reproducing apparatus, which converts the program signal into a predetermined format and stores it in a recording medium. Such recording operations will be carried out in preset intermittent program recording time slots. A number of programs will be temporarily stored in a built-in storage medium. Then, different programs will be combined and edited by cutting off parts of them.
In such a mode of utilization, however, restrictions may be imposed on copying certain programs. However, the relationship between the copy control information (CCI) defined in the real time recording control information (RDI) for the format of DVD-RAM and the control information defined in the video pack of a video packet is not specifically defined in apparatuses adapted to use a DVD-RAM. This means that, if copy prohibiting information is contained in the RDI pack as a navigation that is added for a unit of a video object as defined for the DVD-RAM format, there may be cases where the video pack (the information on the MPEG format) in the unit can be taken out independently to reproduce the video, thus bypassing the prohibition.